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Targeting employers
October 10th, 2008
The common wisdom in the employment market is that people should target specific employers to get their dream job.
The question is, how?
One thing’s for certain. Sending employers your resume is fine in theory, but in practice, particularly in difficult economic times, there are no guarantees.
Job hunters actually have two priorities. The first, obviously, is to get a job. The second is to achieve career movement. This is career targeting, and it has to be done properly.
Problems in career targeting
The brutal fact of job hunting is that not all jobs lead to career movement.
People have to get jobs, and when they get them, the results are often quite far removed from the career ambitions. Some are in other fields, some are dead end jobs, some are in completely different industries from the preferred career.
That doesn’t make the career impossible, but it does make getting your career moving a lot more difficult. It’s sometimes overlooked in the idealized Follow Your Dream scenarios that many people trying to make progress in their careers are in physically and mentally punishing jobs.
Your desire to become a concert pianist may be interrupted by your work on the morning shift as a janitor. Being a warehouseman doesn’t necessarily help you become a brain surgeon or a fighter pilot.
The work, the hours, and the stress combine to make getting some jobs a rather mixed blessing. Add to that the fact that the career is at least temporarily off course, and it’s not a pretty situation. The job is preventing the career, in this case. Some jobs seem to be designed to prevent doing anything but that job.
For the unemployed, the choices and options are a bit simpler, but the need to get a job is so important that any chance of selecting a job is more luck than anything else. The dream job might show up in a job ad, but not often.
In both cases, jobs are short term goals. They serve a purpose, but they’re not the whole story, just a means to an end.
The best career approach is that these jobs, and the realities of job hunting, don’t interfere with the long term goals.
Which is where targeting becomes a real asset. Because you’re really looking for a career move, you have to think long term anyway. As most people know, not all jobs are gems. Even some positions in your career field, as you would have found out after a few attempts, don’t necessarily take you where you want to go.
It’s a matter of getting the right job, and this is where targeting is essential.
Career targeting
Career targeting is really about making the right career decisions.
If you’re job hunting, career targeting is an art. You need to know your profession. But decision making’s a relatively simple process, because you can define what you’re looking for, and you know what you don’t want.
So, you can start by an example, and just fill in the blanks.
- What’s the best job in your profession?
- What are the qualifications and skills required for that job?
- Do you have, or can you get, those skills, and if so, how?
This is a map which practically draws itself. It’s usually more A to Z than A to B, but the progression is reasonably easy to understand, and you know where you’re trying to go.
Now comes the targeting. Again, it’s a simple enough process, but you do have to know how to achieve your goals to make it work efficiently for you. You have to plan a way of getting to the best jobs.
The logic is very straightforward:
- Which employers have the best jobs?
- Which employers have the interim jobs that will give you the skills and qualifications for the best jobs?
These are the employers you will need to target. This actually saves you a lot of time, because you’re avoiding going through jobs that don’t lead to your goals and may even prevent you from progressing. You don’t get distracted, or pulled away from your career ambitions.
Sort out possible employers and research them. You’re looking for an employer with a good track record, profitable, and preferably with a good profile in the industry.
Regarding actual employment, just ring their HR people and ask about any available jobs at your level. That way you get contact names, you establish a relationship with them as an interested person.
Even if they’re not hiring, you will learn a bit about them, and how to go about targeting them as a future employer. If they use an employment agency, contact that agency, express an interest in the company, see if they can help.
For the sake of a phone call, you can get a lot of information for free, information you can’t really get any other way. It’s always worth the effort to check these things out.
Targeting in practice
Targeting requires research. You need to know quite a bit about these employers, and you need to be able to produce a good application when the opportunities arise. You also need to be able to target the next step in your career effectively.
Any career progression is by definition a step up. With that step up, you need to have the right claims to the higher position.
Say you’re a salesman, and you want to become a sales manager as your best career job. There is a position available, and you’ve checked out this employer, who’s a very profitable, upmarket business. Just working for this company is a career asset, and it’s a great job.
To get this job, you need to prove not only your sales credentials, but your management experience and abilities.
In this case, you don’t have those skills, at least not as a manager. You were, however, a team leader in your last job in the industry. You know the nuts and bolts work. You did get some exposure to management, and you do have the essential knowledge, because team leaders are de facto managers in sales, working with the same basic figures and inputs.
You approach your target employer. You ask about the position, explaining that you’re not too sure about your suitability, so you need to check out the position in more detail.
Detail is exactly what you will get, and it’s all useful. You may not be suitable for this particular position. But you will get a lot of information about this move you’re trying to make.
The HR person asks about your team leader role, and sounds a bit dubious. You mention that you did have to do all the figures for your team’s sales, which is, of course, part of the manager’s fundamental responsibilities. The HR person asks if you ever did the sales division figures. You say you didn’t, but you did have an input for your team and were in the meetings when the figures were reviewed. You know the process.
The HR person is describing the job in detail with these questions. These questions are about essentials, the things you must have for your career move. So far, you’re not doing too badly, as a matter of fact. You’ve at least made the point you do have the basic skills and knowledge.
This information also applies to other jobs of this sort. You’re getting a kind of guided tour of the areas you need to address in your application. The HR person eventually suggests you lodge an application, because you’ve at least convinced her you’ve got some claims to the job.
At the interview, it turns out that you’ve also got more claims to the job than the other applicants. Your team leader role was a very good introduction to the practical aspects of the sales manager position.
This is where targeting can take you. Check out the jobs you really want, and find out what you need to get them.
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